West Virginia has statewide child-welfare laws, policies, procedures, and oversight systems. Even with those in place, inconsistency in how the child-welfare system operates remains a documented concern.

During a January 2026 House Judiciary Committee review, officials discussing the West Virginia Department of Human Services’ statewide child-welfare listening tour reported that one of the major findings was a high rate of inconsistency across the state in child-welfare cases, practice, and policy. The listening tour included eight in-person sessions with more than 350 participants and 10 targeted virtual sessions. Officials also reported at that time that West Virginia did not yet have a statewide child-welfare practice model and that the lack of one made consistency more difficult.

Since then, the Bureau for Social Services has continued implementing the Safety Assessment and Family Evaluation, or SAFE, model. In April 2026, BSS described SAFE as a structured framework intended to guide decision-making from intake through ongoing casework, improve consistency, and give caseworkers clearer guidance.

West Virginia also already has quality-improvement and oversight systems in place. State child-welfare planning documents describe district case reviews, corrective-action plans, local and regional Quality Councils, and state-level review of child-welfare data as part of the state’s Continuous Quality Improvement process. The Foster Care Ombudsman is also authorized by law to investigate complaints involving agency acts, practices, policies, or procedures affecting children and families and to provide summarized complaint information to legislative oversight.

The issue is not whether West Virginia has policies or oversight. It is whether the state has a clear and reliable way to determine whether mandatory child-welfare requirements are being followed consistently across BSS districts and local offices, and whether repeated or systemic problems are being identified, corrected, followed up on, and reported.

We respectfully ask the West Virginia Legislature to examine the following:

Statewide review of mandatory requirements. Determine whether child-welfare laws, legislative rules, mandatory BSS policies, procedures, and statewide practice requirements are being applied consistently across districts and local offices. Any review should clearly separate mandatory requirements from areas where workers and supervisors are allowed to use professional judgment based on the facts of an individual case.

Repeated or systemic problems. When reviews, audits, investigations, complaint trends, or quality-improvement processes show repeated or systemic failures involving mandatory statewide requirements, those problems should be formally documented.

Corrective action. When repeated or systemic noncompliance is established, there should be a clear record of what the problem was, what corrective action is required, who is responsible for completing it, and when it should be completed.

Follow-up. Once a problem has been identified and corrective action has been required, there should be follow-up to determine whether the problem was actually corrected and whether compliance continued afterward.

Legislative reporting. The appropriate legislative oversight body should receive enough aggregate information to understand significant systemic problems, what corrective action was required, whether that action was completed, and what follow-up showed. Confidential and personally identifiable information involving children and families must remain protected.

Review of current reform efforts. The Legislature should periodically examine whether SAFE, Continuous Quality Improvement processes, district improvement efforts, and other current measures are actually improving statewide consistency and compliance with mandatory requirements.

This petition does not ask lawmakers to control individual child-welfare decisions or remove the professional judgment that caseworkers and supervisors are allowed to use. It also does not assume that every difference between cases, offices, or districts is a problem.

There is an important difference between legitimate case-by-case judgment and a mandatory statewide requirement being applied differently depending on where a family happens to live.

West Virginia already has laws, policies, oversight bodies, quality-improvement processes, and continuing reform efforts. The state has also publicly acknowledged inconsistency in child-welfare cases, practice, and policy as a significant concern.

What needs to be determined now is whether the system in place is strong enough to identify repeated or systemic failures involving mandatory requirements, make sure corrective action happens, verify that the problem was actually fixed, and give lawmakers enough information to know whether the issue was resolved.

We respectfully ask the West Virginia Legislature to examine these issues and consider any changes needed to strengthen statewide consistency, accountability, corrective action, follow-up, and legislative oversight in West Virginia’s child-welfare system.